the word interesting is over-used and under-appreciated. If something is interesting, it means it holds your interest. Which is more than can be said for 99 percent of the moments on this dust mote.
I'd like to meet:
houdini.
Music:
bob dylan. Dylan Bob. bruce springsteen, Check out the second side of The Wild the innocent and the e street shuffle. Steve Earle, hillbilly highway indeed. John Wesley Harding. If you're not intimately familiar with all of van morrison's catalogue, from Them to Rough God Gone Riding, you are seriously missing out. The Replacements and Paul Westerberg solo. I've always liked Adam Duritz' poetry and phrasing; if you're a hater you probably have issues with intimacy and the toilet.I don't really understand the cults surrounding Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits or Johnny Cash. And I like the fact that I don't. Although I've been getting into Waits lately, so maybe I should take his name out. Richard Thompson is the best acoustic guitarist i've ever heard, although Steven STills was pretty good at a Bridge Benefit I saw in Oakland one night. But i was really, really high. White stripes is cool, but am I an ass-hole for liking the non-guitar stuff more (yes, jaw,you are an asshole. Love, your sister the dog). Not a big fan of punk since i like a little melody or guitar solos and such but I've always appreciated the honesty and ferocity of the music and the message of doing your own thing. I'd pay to watch Joe Strummer, Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins and Johnny Rotten eat the entrails of George W. Bush. at least one of those guys is dead, last I heard. Anyone who doesn't realize and understand the influence the Stooges' three albums wield over all punk, grunge and garage rock since must be retarded. The same with the Beatles on virtually every other pop arena but punk and hip-hop. That's the only time I'll even remotely pretend to know anything about hip-hop. Are the beastie boys hip-hop? THey're OK. The stones from 1968-1972 were unparalleled as far as releasing a string of astonishingly good rock albums. On his good days, Pete Townshend could write with anyone. Third Grade Teacher is a pretty goddamn good band out of los angeles with a possessed lead singer named Sabrina. Which just makes perfect sense. John Coltrane: need I say more. OK. I hope that if reincarnation does happen, that some of us get sent back into time, because I'd like to come back as a Coltrane solo. Miles Davis is wicked, and not just because I heard he once said that he wanted to die with his hands wrapped around a white man's throat. Green Day is the best pop band working these days and american idiot is one of the greatest albums ever. The clash and Nirvana were the best of their respective genres Dave Grohl is the best frontman I've seen since Springsteen. I used to like U2 a great deal until Bono started wearing those shades. The Dead are perfect in that you take from them what you bring to them. If they have no effect or impact on you, chances are they never will. If they turned your life inside out and you've never been the same since, chances are you're kinda fucked up. If they were what they were and you know that makes them are what they are, then that's enough. The Dandy Warhols are a pretty bitching band and the movie Dig! is a must-see. And people who don't think Kurt Cobain was a musical genius are assholes. Neil Young is terribly over-rated. Elvis Costello isn't. The Foo Fighters put on the best big rock show in the world these days. Rocco DeLuca and the Burden is all set to explode and look who wrote about them first in the humble pages of OC weekly. Iif you're not up to speed yet on Mike Barnet and Eugene Edwards, you're no friend of mine. Add Brett mother-fucking Cain! John Wesley Harding made me want to play music in front of people, which led me to writing plays which is where I am now. I liked Flogging Molly before all you bitches. I defer to Markdaddy on all things interestingly cool and new musically speaking.
Movies:
1986 World Series Game Six Re-enacted in RBI Baseball
Game six of the 1986 world series re-enacted in RBI Baseball. All the drama, all the intrigue, all the heartbreak, all the Mookie!http://www.nationalhighfiveday.com
Anchorman could be the greatest cinematic feat since the Great Train Robbery. Although Airplane was pretty damn fine. I laughed harder at the Aristocrats than any other film ever. I like anything with mobsters, particularly the Godfather Epic and Good Fellas. I would have made a damn good hitman back in the day. Now I'm far too slow. Spaghetti westerns are also cool. Richard Pryor and Jim Brown in Adios Amigo may be the best western ever made, though. I've always liked Mel Brooks ideas but don't think he ever made a perfect comedy, although Blazing Saddles comes pretty close. Too bad Richard Pryor couldn't have starred in it. Charlie Kaufman could be the first legitimate genius the genre of screenwriting has produced. Citizen Kane is my all-time favorite but American cinema from about 1967-1974 has the biggest cluster of faves: anything pacino, deniro, beatty, redford, hackman, etc were in then was pretty bomb. George Lucas and STeven Spielberg ruined everything. Five Easy Pieces may be the one that makes me feel the most. The Coen Brothers rock. As did bottle rocket. the list is apparently endless
Television:
people who passionately boast about "not owning a TV" or whatever have got to be the most fucking boring people on the mother-fucking planet. It's a tool people! Arguably still the most influential tool of cultural discourse ever created. The internet's cool, but it's just a fad. TV is a tool. Use it as such. And delight in those shows that are actually well-written, trenchant and just flat-out entertaining" sopranos, deadwood, arrested development, Lost, the Wire. Especially the Wire. Greatest TV drama and season 4 is is the greatest single season of anything. Except fall.
Books:
Somewhat Chronological order: Moses (expect for Leviticus...borrrrrring); most of the old testament especially anything relating to elijah, daniel, king david on his bad days and all those fucked up ways mean old Yahweh screwed with people who didn't believe in him; St. John (best writer of the four gospelers and that rant on the isle of Patmos was pretty gnarly); Plato's Republic; Machievelli for being the first writer to have some real balls, Jonathan Swift; William fucking Blake, Rosseau; anything by Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe or Walt Whitman; Karl Marx; got to love them french symbolists, especially rimbaud and baudelaire, I love Sherlock Holmes as character and concept, but you ever really read Doyle? Same with Edgar rice burroughs: but i devoured Tarzan and John Carter of Mars as a kid; Tolkien was the first to blow my mind; George Bernard Shaw brilliant man deep soul; Henry fucking Miller we are ants in your literary presence,; EDWARD ABBEY, particulary Desert Solataire, the greatest road to read in the west; Eugene O'Neil's latest, saddest plays; herman hesse, Rilke's sonnets to orpheus and letters to a young poet still resonate; Joseph Conrad, Crowley's Thoth tarot; T.s. eliot, particularly hollow men, the wasteland and j. alfred; Mikhael Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita," may be my favorite novel of ever and ever but Marquez' 100 years of solitude is awfully close, George orwell for everything, not just 1984 and Animal Farm, but homage to catalonia, the essays and, especially Why I Write; Joseph campell on heroic myth and circles; gore vidal and norman mailer and philp roth and joseph heller and saul herzog and all those great jew writers post war and before woody allen (add Tom Wolfe in there just for the hell of it but everything after Kool-Aid test suffers. The same with Hunter after the Great White Shark Hunt) , all the beats, from Kerouac and Ginbsberg to Burroughs and DiPrima; ken kesey for everything but mostly Sometimes a Great Notion, marvel comics in the '60s and '70s, alan moore and grant morrison, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and All my Sons, anything by Don Delillo and Sam Shephard, especially
"White Noise," "True West" and "A Lie of the Mind." The play "Dutchman," by Leroi Jones/Amari Baraka, The Onion "Our Dumb Century," is...well, it just is. But when it comes to truly great writers you can start and end any list with two names: Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. Contest all you want, but you would be simply wrong.
but i guess my literary hero would be isaac asimov. not a great writer, not a particularly profound thinker but his incredible curiosity for anything and everything, and his prodigous output, were extraordinary. But Dr. Seuss isprettyclose.
Heroes:
my dad--took a bullet in Sicily while fighting fascism and never missed a day of work due to sickness or laziness in his life and who is still ticking--and working--at the tender age of 87(yes, he has Tony Randell-esque sperm)' Vin scully, stan lee, karl and groucho marx, Frederick Douglas, Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X and MLK, Noam Chomsky, richard pryor, george carlin, Lenny Bruce, William blake, the beats, john coltrane. Sarah silverman. My cats roscoe and blake. John Bailey for saving my life in the Big Apple and for loaning me the Da Vinci Code which led me to the current phase of my life: worshipping Satan.. And allen ginsberg for once telling me to not his follow his path to destruction after I told him what an influence his work had on me...And the fool in the deck.
You are the Fool card. The Fool fearlessly begins
the journey into the unknown. To do this, he
does not regard the world he knows as firm
and fixed. He has a seemingly reckless
disregard for obstacles. In the Ryder-Waite
deck, he is seen stepping off a cliff with
his gaze on the sky, and a rainbow is there
to catch him. In order to explore and expand,
one must disregard convention and conformity.
Those in the throes of convention look at the
unconventional, non-conformist personality
and think What a fool. They lack the point of
view to understand The Fool's actions. But
The Fool has roots in tradition as one who is
closest to the spirit world. In many tribal
cultures, those born with strange and unusual
character traits were held in awe. Shamans
were people who could see visions and go on
journeys that we now label hallucinations and
schizophrenia. Those with physical
differences had experience and knowledge that
the average person could not understand. The
Fool is God. The number of the card is zero,
which when drawn is a perfect circle. This
circle represents both emptiness and
infinity. The Fool is not shackled by
mountains and valleys or by his physical
body. He does not accept the appearance of
cliff and air as being distinct or real.
Image from: Mary DeLave
http://www.marydelave.com/
Which Tarot Card Are You?
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